Yesterday's Die Walküure was glorious, in spite of the 40-minute delay in starting. Absolutely the only thing I can find to carp about is that Jonas Kaufmann sounded a bit flat on his high notes a couple of times. He sounded great the rest of the time, as did all the others. And Bryn Tyrfel is the only singer who has ever made me feel sorry for a god. A fitting finale for the simulcast season.

The Met's website says "Inspired by the musical pastiches and masques of the 18th century, the Met presents an original Baroque fantasy, featuring a who's who of Baroque stars led by eminent conductor William Christie. With music by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and others, the new libretto by Jeremy Sams combines elements of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night¹s Dream. David Daniels is Prospero, Joyce DiDonato is Sycorax, and Plácido Domingo sings Neptune. Danielle de Niese and Luca Pisaroni co-star, along with Lisette Oropesa and Anthony Roth Costanzo. This dazzling production is directed and designed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (Satyagraha and the Met¹s 125th Anniversary Gala)."

Actually, it sounds like a load of old rubbish. Sycorax - she doesn't even appear in The Tempest. Neptune - what's he doing there? (Perhaps he wandered in from Idomeneo or Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria.) On the other hand, William Christie knows what he's doing, Jeremy Sams is an intelligent chap and then there's Joyce di Donato et al. I saw the rubber-faced Luca Pisarone as Leporello at Glyndebourne last year and he is well worth hearing and watching.

The character names are from The Tempest, even to the point of giving Caliban's mother a role instead of just a mention. Where are the "elements" of MND? Since Neptune appears in neither play, maybe he's the god who shows up at the end to make everything right again. But Neptune usually causes trouble, doesn't he? More likely he appears at the beginning to create the storm at sea. Or both. Or neither. Actually, this could be fun.

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Originally posted by Christopher:No Orys or Pasquales on that list, nothing light and funny. Unless it's Rodelinda, but the plot summary reads like a tragedy with a happy ending.

I'm not familiar with Rodelinda either, but it is opera seria, not buffa. No laughs.

Originally posted by Rita:Why the long delay in starting Saturday? 40 minutes late added to five and a half hours performance...you were in the theater six hours and ten minutes?

Oops, missed this. Not quite that long. The performance itself ran a little under five hours instead of the estimated five and a half.

As to the delay, there was a technical hitch. I don't know if you saw Das Rheingold or not, but the entire set for all four Ring operas is one gigantic machine made up of maneuverable planks that also act as a screen for projections. It's incredibly versatile. But Saturday a "decoder" on one of the planks wasn't talking to the computer that controlled it. That was the explanation given during one of the intermissions.

Wednesday I went to the Met's "Encore" showing of Minghella's super-stylized production of Butterfly. I'd skipped the original showing because it had looked too gimmicky for my taste, especially the use of a puppet instead of a child to play Butterfly's son (called both Worry and Sorrow in the subtitles). But that puppet was incredibly effective; its final scenes were heartbreaking. Butterfly is a four-hankie opera anyway, but it got a lot of emotional help from the design. The sliding doors and uncluttered spaces on the stage under a reflecting ceiling concentrated attention on the people on the stage, even when one of them was made of plastic. With Patricia Racette (who was wonderful):

Well, I was wondering whether Beckmesser in Meistersinger, which I saw last Tuesday at Glyndebourne (eat your heart out, Jon - we were only allowed two tickets per member), would be booed, but no.

Some people tried to start a standing ovation at the end of the opera (I thought "Americans!" - saving your presence, people here), but the rest of us sat in our seats to applaud - not just Beckmesser, but the whole thing, daringly set in the Biedermeier period rather than the time of the real Hans Sachs.